Images of Transformation in Traditional Hispanic Poetry, by Paula Olinger (Gettysburg College)
The texts of numerous folk songs that were popular among the peoples of the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages have survived to the present and have become the object of study of scholars who are fascinated by their timeless charm and ineffable beauty.
The symbols discussed in this study are loosely arranged in four categories, to which the four elements have been assigned. Wind and water correspond neatly to the two major clusters of symbols. Fire and earth are used as terms to speak of more varied symbol clusters that seem to gravitate around the poles of a masculine-feminine, or transformer-transformed dichotomy. But no symbol pertains to any specific category exclusively. The symbol does not embody any one meaning, but rather vast potential for meaning. It can be masculine in one place, feminine in another, and still make perfect sense to the psyche of the perceiver.
-From the Introduction
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ISBN: 0-936388-21-8 (HB, 200 pp.) $55